Improving quality and lowering costs in health care

Stockholm County Council increases efficiencies with shared skills and shared data

Stockholm County Council (SLL) uses several different SAS® solutions for analysis and reporting to improve health care outcomes, reduce government costs and improve citizen welfare. To become even more efficient, the council conducted a successful consolidation project with help from SAS partner BearingPoint. As a result, all units within SLL now have access to shared information, shared skills and a common interface. The consolidation has lowered SLL costs and was kept within predetermined budgets and time frames.

SLL is Sweden's second-largest public organization in terms of budgetary framework and staff, employing more than 40,000 people. The council's main responsibilities are for the public health care system and public transport, with three quarters of its budget going to health care (including dental care). It is a complex organization with boards and administrations that are responsible for planning and providing publicly funded health care services.

The consolidation project has been very successful and exceeded expectations. We got a good platform both within the budget and on time.

Ivan Labbé-Reyna
SAS Officer of SLL IT

A common environment

SLL has used analytics and reporting solutions from SAS since the late 1980s. Initially, it had different administrations, and the separate departments had separate installations for each application. Because SLL was pleased with SAS, it decided to create a common operating environment to take even more advantage of SAS solutions.

"It is a great advantage that the entire organization now has access to all analytical solutions," says Göran Lord, Analyst in the Development Department at The Public Healthcare Services Committee and Administration (HSNf), SLL.

The joint portal (called GUPS) covers SLL's need to collect, analyze and report data for planning and monitoring needs, volume, quality and effectiveness of health care. Users of the information include purchasing officials, pharmaceutical centers, hospitals and other care providers.

On budget, on time

"When all units had their own databases, the information on the databases was not available for the other departments. Possibly, they could get reports delivered as a PowerPoint or Excel document. Now all information is accessible from a common analysis portal, and updates need only be made in one place," says Ivan Labbé-Reyna, SAS Officer of SLL IT.

"The consolidation project has been very successful and exceeded expectations. We got a good platform both within the budget and on time. There were periods of problems, for example, in connection with people that left the project, but I am proud that we were stubborn and chose to continue to invest," says Labbé-Reyna.

Success factors: support, sharing

In connection with the consolidation project, SLL started an administrative board with representatives from the separate departments that use the GUPS, giving important coordination between the different departments.

"The Administrative Board meets every two weeks. A more regular contact between all users of the platform allows us to easily share knowledge and learn from each other's experience," says Lord.

"Two critical success factors were that the project had support from the county management and that the teams responsible for the day-to-day business were in the driving seat of the project," says Labbé-Reyna.

Several million kronor in savings

"The driving force has been to find synergies, to share skills and have a common architecture and management. Previously we needed several system managers and five to six different servers. Today, it is easy for all devices that are not yet connected but want to take advantage of the common analysis portal to join the GUPS based on existing permissions," says BearingPoint's project manager for the consolidation project.

Consolidation has also led to the streamlining of support services. So far, SLL reports total savings of several million Swedish kronor (US $1 million equals 6.4 million kronor). GUPS also adds quality assurance of data since SLL has eliminated manual procedures, and all changes now take place in one place.

Challenge

Stockholm County Council (SLL) needed to consolidate projects across departments.

Solution

Benefits

SLL was able to consolidate projects and increase efficiencies, thus lowering costs.

The results illustrated in this article are specific to the particular situations, business models, data input, and computing environments described herein. Each SAS customer’s experience is unique based on business and technical variables and all statements must be considered non-typical. Actual savings, results, and performance characteristics will vary depending on individual customer configurations and conditions. SAS does not guarantee or represent that every customer will achieve similar results. The only warranties for SAS products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements in the written agreement for such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. Customers have shared their successes with SAS as part of an agreed-upon contractual exchange or project success summarization following a successful implementation of SAS software. Brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.